Terrapin toddlers ready for release

A public release of diamondback terrapin turtles will take place June 19, at 5 p.m. on Sandy Neck.

Lee Roscoe

BARNSTABLE NATURAL RESOURCES DEPARTMENT PHOTO

CAN I COME OUT AND PLAY? A baby terrapin looks like it’s ready for release.

Public invited to Sandy Neck coming-out party

A public release of diamondback terrapin turtles will take place June 19, at 5 p.m. on Sandy Neck. Meeting at the gatehouse, Barnstable Natural Resource officer Amy Raitto will give a brief introduction to the species. There will be a short walk of less than ten minutes to release the young turtles to a brackish pond.

Raitto says that an informal headstart program involving school children has been in place at Sandy Neck for a decade, formalized in the past two years. “But since the public has been so excited about the animals,” she said, “we thought we would do our first public release.”

The ready-to-go turtles have been nurtured at the Natural Resources office on Phinney’s Lane. “These are the runts, the ones we collected which were in danger,” Raitto said. “We didn’t want to distribute them to schools in case they died.”

Diamondback terrapin meat and soup has been eaten since Indian times, becoming a delicacy at the turn of the last century (the Gay Nineties to the Roaring Twenties), thus diminishing them. Now, they are state-listed as threatened.

Terrapins don’t migrate, so they are true townies. They are the only true turtles to inhabit brackish water in estuaries, tidal creeks and marshes where they live on snails, clams, worms, and some marsh plants. The Cape is the northern edge of their range, which extends to the Gulf of Mexico.

The markings of their shallow shell are diamondish to rectangular, deeply etched, resembling box turtles. Tails are thick and long, and feet are fat with hind feet paddle-like and webbed. The neck is thick, reminiscent of a mud turtle.

They can live to at least 40. Females must be eight to ten years old to breed, and six to nine inches long. They move as much as a quarter mile out of the marsh to dig nests, which appear to us as elliptical depressions, where they deposit and cover between two and 22 whitish eggs with a thinnish leathery skin in the upper sandy edges of salt marsh from Memorial Day through the summer.

Eggs hatch in a staggered fashion from August through October (Late deposited eggs may over-winter when the turtles themselves hibernate). Males are smaller and younger when mature. Raitto says males only leave the marsh waters to bask. Climate change could affect their reproduction because higher temperatures on eggs produce more females; cooler, more males).

Following "Tonka-truck-like" tracks leads terrapin monitors to nests, according to Sandy Neck Manager Nina Coleman. Ones that might be predated by skunks and raccoons are covered with “high-tech milk crates.”

With licenses from the state, resource officers may collect the eggs: 80 this year, 43 of which went to schools, a senior center or two and Long Pasture sanctuary to incubate.

Up to 122 nests have been found on Sandy Neck in the past two years, Coleman says,crediting headstarting with upping numbers from only 44 in 2006.

Eggs to headstart are taken from nests that might be crushed by ORVs. It’s a three-part process. First eggs are warmed in five-gallon buckets with holes in the bottom, in moistened sand under incubating lights. Second, hatchlings are kept in buckets (without holes) under special lights that help them to grow and form healthy shells, until their egg sacs are completely absorbed. “If you start feeding them before the egg sacks are used up,” Raitto said, “they can develop eating issues.” Sometimes, they will starve themselves.

Once hatched, said Raitto, “they are placed into 30-gallon reptile aquariums in about 17 gallons of water; with enough room to swim in, they are kept separate from one another via plastic stalls (they are very territorial and will bite off each other's tails). They grow and grow under basking lamps and they just love to eat the special pellets they are fed.”

Mentored turtles are four times bigger at one year than the wild ones, which gives them a better chance not to end up as snack food for coyotes, foxes, birds, and snakes/

“Getting children outside is as important as increasing terrapin numbers,” said Raitto. “We live in an age where there is a lot of technology, and not enough nature.”

When children take care of turtles, they “become invested” in going outside. So much so that when the Sandwich and Barnstable schoolchildren (K-5) release their beloved turtles – each batch at a special release date, all before the end of the school year in June – they bring poems and songs to say good bye. Maybe the public at large will fall as in love with terrapins, too.